Automated Explanations for Debugging

在这个建议中，我们专注于自动调试的问题。这一领域的目标是设计技术，帮助软件开发人员理解和纠正行为不端的计算机程序中的缺陷。用于自动调试的现有技术集中于做出关于源代码的哪些行可能包含程序的所有源代码中的错误的假设。相反，这个建议专注于清楚而简洁地解释程序如何以及为什么会出错。这些解释是在没有人类交互的情况下产生的，有助于简化和消除修复错误软件过程中的猜测。目前还不知道如何计算涉及并发的程序，如那些与多个并发执行线程的解释，但并发性正在成为现代程序中的一个基本结构，是至关重要的。这个建议解决了迄今为止尚未解决的问题，产生这样的解释程序涉及多个并发执行的组件。这项建议进一步解决了以开发人员能够理解和使用的语言和格式向软件开发人员提供解释的重要问题。 在过去的十年里，提高软件开发的可靠性和成本效益一直是谷歌、苹果、微软和IBM等主要软件公司的主要关注点。改进的调试工具降低了成本，提高了软件开发的生产力。这些降低的成本和提高的生产力对于维持加拿大不断增长的软件产业非常重要。这些技术还提高了软件的可靠性，更好地保证了计算机程序做它们想做的事情。因此，使用该软件的公司和个人也通过避免软件行为不当所造成的麻烦来节省资金。

In this proposal, we focus upon the problem of automated debugging. The goal in this area is to devise techniques that help software developers understand and correct flaws within misbehaving computer programs. Existing techniques for automated debugging focus on making hypotheses about which lines of source code may contain a bug amongst all source code for a program. This proposal instead focuses on clearly and concisely explaining how and why a program misbehaved. These explanations are produced without human interaction and help to simplify and remove guesswork from the process of fixing faulty software. It is not presently known how to compute such explanations for programs involving concurrency, such as those with multiple concurrently executing threads, yet concurrency is emerging as a fundamental construct in modern programs and is of critical importance. This proposal addresses the heretofore unresolved issue of producing such explanations for programs involving multiple concurrently executing components. This proposal further addresses the important issue of presenting explanations to software developers in languages and formats that developers can understand and use. Improving the reliability and cost-effectiveness of software development has been a primary focus over the last decade for key software companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and IBM. Improved debugging tools lower the costs and increase productivity within software development. These lower costs and increased productivity are important for maintaining Canada's growing software industry. These techniques also improve the reliability of software, providing better assurances that computer programs do what they are intended to. As a result, companies and people who use the software also save money by avoiding hassles created by software that misbehaves.